If you’re new to the professional affiliate marketing Internet business playground, then you’re no doubt wondering what affiliate marketing is all about. In simplest terms, it is marketing and promoting some other company’s products/services on the Internet. You, the pro affiliate marketer, promote through whatever means is available to you (your ezine, blog, email, online advertising, etc.), which then sends traffic and customers to another company’s website, who then does all the work — develop, sell and support the actual products and/or services; close the sale; process the orders, take payments and make delivery; etc. — for the paying customer. You, as the marketer and source of that business, are then paid a commission for your work. That’s it!

The whole business arrangement is essentially revenue sharing. The company that provides the product or service being sold is generally called the affiliate merchant, and he shares the revenue they generate with you, the affiliate marketer, for sending business their way. In most cases, the affiliate marketer drums up that business through various forms of legitimate advertising techniques on a wide variety of online avenues and platforms.

Note that generally, the affiliate merchant does not pay anything for the “marketing” and promotion until a sale has actually occurred. This way, the merchant can minimize both risk and expenditures. Theoretically, the affiliate can then be rewarded more handsomely for taking on that marketing risk and expenditure. However, since the affiliate marketer does not need to take on the risk, investment and expenditure of developing and supporting a product/service and administering a sale, the relationship is very much considered a win-win arrangement, with each party focusing on the part of the business they are good at and interested in.

Tracking, Calculating and Paying Affiliate Income

How the affiliate marketer essentially gets paid for his work depends entirely on the affiliate merchant. In practically all cases, the arrangement is wholly managed through an automated system, with the merchant using Internet server-based software that gives an affiliate marketer a unique link code or ID which the marketer must then use to identify all the traffic and customers he sends to the merchant. This is really the only way the merchant can properly identify, credit and compensate the right affiliate for any business generated.

In some cases, an affiliate merchant uses the resources of a much larger affiliate network service (such as Commission Junction, LinkShare, etc.) to administer its affiliate program. Some other merchants, on the other hand, choose to run their own in-house affiliate system, keeping their program independent from everybody else’s. In practically all cases, however, the basics of how an affiliate program tracks and calculates affiliate commissions follow what is outlined above.

The merchant generally specifies the financial terms beforehand (pay periods, minimum payment thresholds, when money is paid and how, etc.), whether it uses the services of a 3rd party service or runs its own affiliate program in-house. How an affiliate is ultimately paid will depend on these predetermined specifics, and they can run the gamut from being paid online through services like Paypal, having funds wired directly to an affiliate’s bank account, to having a physical check printed and mailed directly to the affiliate.

Although there is obviously a level of trust in the merchant involved in this arrangement, it works because not only is it to the affiliate merchant’s benefit to maintain a good working relationship with its affiliates in order to grow its business and ensure its continued success, the community of professional affiliate marketers is fairly tight-knit with extensive communications channels that quickly reports any shadiness and negative business dealings. On top of that, affiliate programs that run on third party network services offer an extra layer of protection and trust to the affiliate, with the networks helping ensure that all transactions are properly tracked, calculated and compensated. This is one reason that many professional affiliate marketers often adopt a policy that they will only work with affiliate programs that are administered through these third party affiliate network services.

Affiliate Program Selection

You, as the professional affiliate marketer, are free to choose whatever affiliate program you wish to join and market. In other words, you essentially choose which products and/or services you’ll be promoting (through your blog, web site, ezine, advertisements, etc.). It is not a light decision, since your income is very much affected by how well you match your total “offer” to your “audience” or “market.” That, however, is essentially your job and is part of what you as the professional affiliate marketer is compensated richly for.

In many cases, what affiliate programs you do choose is usually determined by your preexisting markets and audiences, For example, if you already run a gardening blog, then obviously the programs you would seek out would be gardening related or ones that you’ve determined would be of interest to the audience demographic your gardening site attracts.

If you are approaching this affiliate marketing business as a pure marketer, however, where the decision on how to market a product or service would be highly dependent on what it is you actually select to promote, how you select an affiliate program can be based on many different factors.

Some professional affiliate marketers, for example, choose programs based on commission size (high payouts per sale) or market size. These are business decisions you have to make, again, part of what you’re getting paid for. Here are some suggestions for beginners, however, that may help you get started.

Choose products/services you are personally interested in. If you are interested in gardening or golf, for example, then focus on products/services specifically for those markets. The plain simple truth of it is that it is much harder to promote a product or service that you really couldn’t care less about.

Choose products/services that do not embarrass you and that you are comfortable having your friends and family associate with you. For example, even though it’s quite lucrative, some professional affiliate marketers are unable to promote dating sites and services for reasons of embarrassment and discomfort.

Choose products/services you are already familiar with and fully understand. Even if you are not all that interested in automobiles or travel, for instance, you may already know more than enough about the products and services in those particular markets that you can actually sell in those market niches.

Select affiliate programs that provide you with the best sales support. This only comes up from prior research, of course, but it’s something you must do anyway. The sales support referred to here are things like training, advertising material and resources, extensive product information, etc. Obviously, the more tools they give you to sell with, the better your chances.

Remember: Being a professional affiliate marketer means that you are in business. Your business. Your success is ultimately determined by your decisions and actions. Good luck.

An easy way to increase you website traffic by far would
be by setting up the affiliate programs. But the key is that
you shouldn’t just set up any old affiliate program.

The easiest way to set up the best affiliate programs is do
give more to your affiliates. And to also build a relationship
with them. But first you must give your Affiliates Much, Much More.

You will see many opportunities for affiliate programs around
the net, but the best affiliate programs offer much more :-

The Best affiliate programs :-

– Have an extremely good product that smashes all competitors.

– Offers high quality tools and ads to help affiliates sell.

– Offer a higher commission per sale (55% – 85% is good)

– Quick support network and FAQ section to avoid confusions.

– Has an extremely good offer.

– Has very valuable bonuses attached to the main product.

– Instant payment to affiliate when a sale is made.

– Once a sale has been made by an affiliate -praise them.

As you can see this makes up a some of the best affiliate programs
on the internet. The best affiliate programs, normally
capture the most affiliates, receive tons of traffic to their sites,
and most importantly get lots of sales.

Most of the well known marketers online succeed because they often
have the best affiliate programs.

This is a terrific model if you want to succeed also.

If you offer an outstanding selection and service, you do not have
to compete on price as much as you think you do, because the affiliates
are driving lots of traffic there to your site. Just worry about
having a good setup and you will rise to the top and be the best
affiliate program around.

Another important factor to consider into the equation is commission.
Referring sites are more likely to give your business more presence on
their pages when the rewards are so much greater? And when they do
that, what do you think will happen to your sales?

Here’s my point: if you’re currently hosting an poor performing affiliate
program, take a look at your customer acquisition costs and honestly ask yourself,
“What’s the biggest commission I can offer?” Then give it.

Also ask how you make your affiliate program one of the best affiliate
programs by asking your affiliates what they want and using the tips above.
That will ensure that the best affiliate program on offer will be yours.

Mobile marketing is the recent buzzword and push notification is definitely an indispensable part of this promotional journey. Reaching the users out of the app usage was not an easy task but the push notifications have made it possible. It has the power to stay apart without getting lost in the colossal crowd of unread messages. Although push notifications are the ideal way of grabbing user attention, they can be easily manipulated – if, in wrong hands, it has more influence to do wrong than anything right.

Problems

According to a report published a year ago, people find push notifications really annoying. The fact is push messages are nothing but attention seekers. They like to grab user’s response being a direct communicating line between the customer and the app. It is important that only relevant messages reach the app user without infuriating them. The problems that usually arise in case of push notifications are-

· When the user is giving consent for push notifications, marketers must ensure only the relevant updates are reaching the customer by knowing their set of preferences.

· It must be realized soon that push notification is a privileged tool that must not be used for spamming users with all day frequent messages.

· Wrong timing can annoy a user and make them instinctively delete the app. To avoid any such thing set the timer right for relevant alerts.

· Before sending any push messages certain criteria like age, time, basically all user info is must because otherwise you are bound to send wrong messages to wrong people.

· Push ads through notifications are a complete no for any user who wishes to stay with you and likes your app.

· Late messages can annoy people to the core.

· Marketers must ensure that opting out of push messages must be as easy as opting in for notifications. Easy settings can stop the customers from deleting the app completely.

Industry Overview

The year 2015 was considered as the game changer for push notification industry. From general push messages, the focus shifted to segmented notifications to target users based on their preferences. The changeover from spammy, unrelated push messages to planned tactical ones significantly enhanced consumer engagement, retention, and experience. Every industry must be flexible enough to remain in the forefront of the varying flows of customer needs. The fashionistas and creators struggle to imagine the subsequent popular trend, whereas, the medical scholars try to retort to nature’s hardest queries. To become a leader in a particular industry setting trends is more important than just following them blindly.

Push notifications are the most economical and best way to drive app retention and engage your customers. But, often it is applied in a thoughtless, insensitive, and honestly indecorous manner. A new report from Accenage that is based on more than 38 billion push messages suggests, if such notifications are applied and used fittingly, push messages can be very influential on Android (until the launch of Android M OS), with 100% opt-in rate.

20 Interesting Solutions

The Push Notifications are as important as the user experience (UX) of your app because the researchers believe that more than 71% of the app uninstallations are usually triggered by the push messages. The bottom line is bad push practices can be harmful as push notifications directly hit the users and not the devices. So let’s check out few of the best push practices to hit the bull’s eye.

1. Respect to the Specific Local Timezone

It is quite easy to think and act according to your own time zone like “its 8 p.m. in India so let’s start circulating the push messages”. The push notification doesn’t work that way. When your customers are involved it becomes vital that your messages hit the user at the right time when they are ready to receive it according to their time zone. A decent push service will definitely reduce the server load and stagger the messages over a window if required.

2. Internally Prioritize a Message

What is prioritizing a message? The marketers often think, the more, the better. Right? It is not the same in all cases. Many times, more can reduce your revenue, your users, usage, feedback, and everything. Sending 23-50 pushes a day to the customers can not only irritate them but also make them uninstall an app. Thus, internally prioritizing a message to 5-10 maximum per day can help and suit most of the applications.

3. Avoid Generic Pushes

Considering a hard limit to multiple pushes per day can be an effective practice. You might be thinking of sending various services that can help your app interact with the user, inform them and gain user preference knowledge. But, generic pushes can be termed as bad practice. Giving preference to the transactional messages can grab more attention of the user.

4. Value Your User’s Sleep

As far as night is concerned, people usually want a good night’s sleep in order to start a fresh day. Mobiles are usually put on silent or do not disturb mode while people are asleep. Considering this, do you really think people really have time to go through all the push messages pouring in throughout the night or in the early morning? So, marketers must also value the user’s sleep and limit the notifications till day time. Maybe a summary push notification in the morning can be more effective than 10 odd messages at night.

5. Personalise Content For Users

The push messages can be personalised and sent to the users to make it more valuable. Except for junk and irrelevant messages, news alerts, deals, and chats based on user preferences can create a positive impact. Numerous marketing automation are possible with some very basic data inputs. Like how long the app is installed on your device, what level of the game you are at present, your last usage, and many such small things can help in personalizing push messages for the users.

6. Favour the Transactional Pushes

The 1:1 push messages that are usually directed to the single user and are not commonly unique with audience division, is termed as a transactional push. For instance, their package is being shipped or there’s a new like, and more. Such notifications are seamlessly bespoke as per the definition. Yet, timeliness is one of the best practices that one must adhere to.

7. Personalize with User Name

When a message is purely meant for a user and is indicated with the user’s name in the push messages, like Ronit, it is time for your doctor’s visit in another 4 hours; people take it more seriously and truly like such notifications.

8. Make it Simple and Short within 10 words

To create impact in minds of the users, 10 words are more than enough to convey the right message what you wish to let your user know.

9. Correct Implementation of the Technology

To keep the 71% stats shown above at bay, implementing the notifications rightly is very important. It is not just about certificates and provisioning.

10. Seeking Permission is Indeed Vital

The pop-up alert appearing at the beginning of installing an app seeking permission is ideally the most vital checkpoint. Without the permission of the user notifications cannot be pushed.

11. Seek a 3rd Party Service

Setting up push notifications is not an easy task to do it on your own. Seeking help from the 3rd party service is the best option in terms of topping, consistency and good features.

12. Opt Content Preload

If you are directed to some in-app content by a push message, preloading it with available API is most likely to do. This can delay the push by few seconds but you get the ready to go UI, without waiting for the irritating loading screen.

13. Easy Availability of the Notification Settings

Difficulty in locating the notification configurations can be annoying for the customers. Easy availability of the setting to turn off or on the notification is vital.

14. Personalize Message as per Location

Appropriate location-based significant messages will develop engagement with the customers. Personalizing messages according to the location of the user can be a great practice.

15. Out of the Box Thinking

It is important that you deliver specific value and unique content to end users while incorporating the push notifications in your planning strategies. This requires out-of-the-box thinking. The push ads are not just a slice of your communication approach; it is a portion of customer’s mobile involvement with your brand.

16. Smart Segmentation

The CRM software or the in-app behaviour must be the intelligent factors for smart segmentations. The user behaviour and profiles are both required for a solid division planning.

17. Defining KPI

The mobile key performance indicator can help you understand the real engagements, long-term retention or conversion, and lifetime or revenue value of the product whereas, the click and conversion rates just helps in understanding the preliminary achievement of a campaign.

18. Content plays a Major Role

The content of your message creates a strong impact on the success of push notifications. Such as, “off”, “discounts”, “promo code”, etc. have a strong interest of the consumers.

19. Rich Pushes

Apart from the text content, the Android forever lol and iOS 10 brings forward rich pushes. Now, your push previews can include GIF images and videos. For arbitrary views from your iOS 10, you can study in detail.

20. Expired Message Removal

Once the message loses its relevance, it must be automatically removed. For instance, 50% off on shoes was an offer valid a week ago but at present is of no use to the user, so it must be removed automatically.

Why is Betaout All In One Ecommerce Marketing Automation?

Betaout empowers the E-Commerce businesses to upsurge conversions and identify with the user engagement procedure using real-time user personality and committed data. It offers a tailored set of tools that the marketers of e-commerce businesses can utilize to distinguish themselves and thus address precise client needs. The hassle free Betaout tool is an easy-to-use marketing solution that enables the e-commerce companies to bring their marketing efforts into a strict line, offering them the much-required edge over the competitors.

eCommerce is enjoying unbridled success due to the many conveniences it offers such as shopping without having to visit a store, indulging in impulse purchases, fabulous offers and doorstep delivery! We bring you 3 reasons to have a mobile application for your eCommerce customer and business needs.

Mobile Feature Integration

As mobile technology is maturing towards the minimalistic and sixth sense programming, its features and instruments like wearable device, GPS tracking, beacon technology etc. can be leveraged for completely automated and informed business approach. From the customer end, GPS tracker on the customer’s device can be used to find their current location and make a spot delivery to ensure you don’t miss them when they are not at home when the agent is out-on-delivery. Further, the in-built NFC technology can be used for cashless payments in cash-on-delivery transactions. Beacon technology can be used to streamline warehouse activities and the GPS tracker to ensure seamless supply chain management.

Regular Updates via push notifications

SMSes and emails can be intrusive or overlooked or spammed based on the receiver’s mood. Mobile applications have in-built technologies to send push notifications that can be glimpsed at for further details in the drop-down before being pursued or discarded. These are unobtrusive yet attractive messages to catch the device owner’s eyes and spur them to explore offers further. Internally, they can be used as reminders, chats and instant messaging tools to communicate with team members or even stakeholders, suppliers and business partners.

Building brand loyalty with Indigenous Experience

A mobile application can be arranged to suit the customer’s preferences by showing them similar products and new offerings based on their lifestyle and interests. With personalised messages pushed onto their device regularly, it gives the shopper a personalised shopping experience. The company may consider integrating a voice navigation tool that will verbally communicate with the prospective buyer and act as their style guide to give a live shopping experience. Further, with features such as 4-D images customers can try out the product before deciding to make the purchase. Within the company, with employees, partners and suppliers, a loyalty towards the company can be established by facilitating them with the right technologies to perform their tasks easily, in a timely manner and with greater transparency.

Mobile application keeps people connected with the business all the time and it makes activities such as marketing and communication more noticeable. Hence, along with a full-fledged responsive website, a mobile application for the business is equally essential.

A cross-platform mobile application that works well on all major mobile platforms will ensure the eCommerce business gets greater visibility among prospective customers.